For local author Erica M. Reilly, beach season is never really over. As a self-published author of The Swells of Stone Harbor and The Shallows of Avalon, Reilly’s writing always brings her back to the Jersey shore. 

“It was something I’d always wanted to do,” Reilly said about writing a book.

Having grown up in and around New Jersey—her parents even met in Ocean City, and her husband’s family has a house in Stone Harbor—the shore had always been a big part of her life. As her family grew, it became an important spot to share with her own children. She loved how everyone she met had their own stories or memories with each town.

“If you say Fred’s Tavern, people are like, ‘Oh, Fred’s!’ or The Princeton. And then you get to hear other people’s stories about it,” she said. 

Reilly worked as a writer for years in New York City before settling down in West Chester, Pennsylvania, writing for big-name corporations, including NYMEX, Guardian Life, and Lilly Pulitzer. But writing a book was a dream Reilly never truly gave up on. About four years ago, something shifted, and the story seemed to align: “I was at the beach, and I was like, ‘I want to write about Stone Harbor.’” 

Reilly self-published her first book, The Swells of Stone Harbor, in 2024. Her writing is inspired by some of her favorite writers, authors of beach read classics like Elin Hilderbrand and Carley Fortune.

It took her about two years to write, edit, and publish her first book, getting most of her insights on self-publishing from books, online resources, and forums.

With her second book, The Shallows of Avalon, which was published in April 2026, Reilly shared that she had three big-time agents express interest in her story. She went back and forth with agents for an entire year after her book was finished before she decided to self-publish again. “I could’ve kept going. I could’ve kept querying,” Reilly said. “But I was like, ‘I think I just want to self-publish.’” 

So she found editors through online services, formatted her book using programs like Reedsy, used Canva and Photoshop to edit a photo she had taken of a lifeguard to create a cover image, and she self-published again. “I kind of just sat with it until it felt like it was right,” she said. 

Self-publishing is a quickly changing industry. It has created a much more accessible avenue for new authors to get their stories out in the world, but with that, it has also become easier to get lost in the thousands of books being self-published each year. Reilly talked about some of the struggles that come with self-publishing, especially in this age of AI. 

“I write with Google Docs, and Grammarly is always trying to rewrite things for me. I’m like, ‘No. I don’t want anyone to think I’m using AI.’ I don’t use AI, because why would I? It just ruins everything in writing,” Reilly expressed.

“I did notice in the four years that I’ve been writing, when my first book came out, I was number one in beach reads for about three days because so many people bought it. Now it’s so much harder with my second book. I had just as many sales, but I think there are just so many other books,” she said. “There are so many more books published a year, so I think it’s very hard to stick out because so many people are using AI and just self-publishing. There’s no real quality control like agents and publishers and all that.” 

Another difficult element of self-publishing was the promotional side. When talking about how she balances the creative side of being a writer with the business and promotional side of being an author, Reilly said jokingly, “I probably don’t balance it. I do what I can.” 

For her, this is where her community comes in. In addition to a great community of writers and authors she has built through learning to self-publish and through local author events, she also finds that a lot of her success comes from the local community around the Jersey Shore. 

“They sell so much in Stone Harbor and Avalon, it’s crazy,” Reilly said about her books. “I think it’s just kind of like a souvenir for people.” 

While in the process of writing and researching her books, Reilly meets so many locals, be it people at the Stone Harbor Yacht Club, the Ocean City Police Department, or an owner of a Wildwood Marina. This attention to detail and these little local touches really shine through in her stories, making it fun for people to connect with while on vacation. 

Reilly shared that her upcoming book will take place in Wildwood, New Jersey, and there will be no shortage of local connections. While still early in her writing process, she plans to incorporate a friend’s Wildwood Marina into her story, along with classic local events like the Wildwood Mummer’s parade. 

In this book, she plans to revisit the troubled character named Sabrina from The Swells of Stone Harbor. “She kind of turned out to be a person causing a lot of trouble… and this is like her redemption story,” Reilly shared. 

Owning her title as a writer and putting herself out there to make local connections when researching her stories has made a big difference in Reilly’s experience as an author. 

“I would say, really, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there,” Reilly said. She shared that she was always nervous about putting her work out there and about people judging her, but she’s found that everyone she talks to and everyone she has met has been nothing but kind to her. 

At the end of the day, there is just something to be said about going out and doing the things that you love. “I have this really good friend who’s a gardener, and she goes out, and she has this huge garden of flowers and vegetables, and she’s always like, ‘I lose track of time when I’m outside,’” Reilly shared. “And when I sit down, and I write, I lose track of time too. It’s just something that I just love doing.” 

To anyone who feels the way she does about writing, Reilly says, “Just get out there and do it. Don’t worry about what people say and what people think because everyone I know has said, ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book.’ Just do it.”

Photo courtesy of Erica Reilly | Interviewed on August 25, 2026